Liberty University launched a COVID-19 dashboard that revealed that over 1,000 students and staff are in or scheduled to quarantine due to the coronavirus. There are gaps and questions that remain however. For example what is the COVID-19 rates prior to this COVID dashboard? What are the COVID-19 infection numbers in the spring of 2020? If anyone has that information please contact this blog so it can be explored and analyzed.
“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”
Thomas Jefferson
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Philippians 2:3-4 ESV
COVID-19 virus
On September 16, 2020 Liberty University launched a COVID-19 dashboard and information revealed about the pandemic’s effects are troubling. Let’s look at the data and ask some questions.
What the COVID-19 Dashboard Shows
The Liberty University COVID-19 dashboard has only been live for a couple of days since this post has been written. Altogether the data reveals that over 1,000 Liberty University students or staff are in quarantine. 487 on campus students are in quarantine. 492 commuters instructed to quarantine. 139 employees are instructed to quarantine. Combined that comes to 1,118 in quarantine or expected to quarantine. There are 141 active cases with most being students and four being active faculty or staff.
According to WSLS those liberty students who don’t follow social distancing will not be punished. Liberty is at 1% with an infection and if Liberty gets to 5% then the school will go to virtual learning. If you would like to read more you can go to, “More than 1,000 Liberty University students, employees either in or instructed to quarantine.”
What About the COVID-19 Stats for the Year 2020?
The COVID-19 dashboard looks at the facts from September 2 until 16. The question needs to be asked what about the stats for the start of the pandemic forward? Classes began at Liberty on January 13, 2020 and the semester ended on May 8, 2020. In the fall semester of 2020 most of the university came back on the dates between August 20 through 23, 2020. That information that is related to COVID-19 has not been released by Liberty University. If you go to the Virginia Department of Health the numbers for Lynchburg is pretty telling for Virginia. Since the pandemic began there have been over 1,237 cases of COVID-19 with 35 being hospitalized. The question remains how many of those numbers in the 2020 year are Liberty University students or faculty or staff? These are gaps this blog is identifying and if someone can communicate this information to me this blog would like to write about it. The email address is wonderingeagle261@gmail.com
Recalling What Jerry Falwell Jr Said About COVID-19 or How Liberty Responded in the Spring of 2020
When it comes to COVID-19 Jerry Falwell Jr said a number of things that were quite troubling about COVID. Or he had policy decisions that this blog would regard as being reckless and endangering to students and staff at Liberty. When the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading across the United States Jerry Falwell Jr dismissed it and claimed that the virus was invented by North Korea and China and that the pandemic was another attempt to remove President Trump. Jerry Falwell Jr did this on Fox News. You can read more in, “On Fox Jerry Falwell Jr Claims that COVID-19 Is a Biological Weapon Created by North Korea and China. Plus The Controversial Liberty Leader States that the Coronavirus is Another Effort to Remove President Trump.” Jerry Falwell Jr took heat for bringing people back to campus when the pandemic was ongoing. Local officials were told otherwise. You can read more about this at, “Jerry Falwell Jr is Keeping Liberty University Open as Local Officials and Marybeth Davis Baggett Plead Otherwise. Remember if its Christian It Must Be Better. That Applies to the Bodybags Liberty Will Use During a Pandemic.” You can read the push back that Marybeth Baggett gave to Jerry Falwell Jr and Liberty to the school staying open. You can read that in, “Preserving Some of the Facebook Messages Sent to Marybeth Baggett From Staff Concerned About Liberty University Being Open During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Then in early April of 2020 it was learned that Liberty was dealing with COVID-19. You can read more in, “Liberty University is Dealing With COVID-19. Did Falwell Needlessly Expose Students to Harm? And Why Didn’t Dr. Thomas W. Eppes Advocate to Close the School?“
Wondering Eagle 
I just saw an article saying that our rates are spiking now. We were doing so well in the beginning, our numbers way down, until the WI Supreme Court abolished the quarantine. When I do (rarely) go out, I see masks in the strip mall, but not out on the trails, even though a lot of people go out there and there isn’t room to socially distance when you pass each other. On Sunday, the priest said things are finally getting better–No, they’re not. Sharing a spoon is considered close contact, but the priests in the metropolis are forbidden to give communion any other way. The high school is doing blended learning with masks and distancing, but we’ve already had a COVID case. The one promising thing, though, is not many people had to quarantine, from what they told us. I just wish everybody would take this seriously. I’m anxious to get my life back but it may not be for another year????!!!! I’m not getting any younger….
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I hear you l am confined to home. This pandemic is stressful. Family friend died of COVID-19 in Montana recently. My sister was not feeling well and her employer wanted her to get a COVID test. We’re waiting for the results. Frustrating and anxious. I hear you.
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Let’s get real about COVID-19.
The pangolin farms are still operating in Myanmar, and they’re still sending their wares to the Chinese wet-markets. Meanwhile, China has done nothing (even in the face of solid science about viral transmission from animal to human) to curb its taste for exotic animal meats.
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Here’s one article about LIberty and covid last spring.
I’m still optimistic. Here in WI the case numbers are skyrocketing, but it’s almost all college students, and the hospitalization rate remains flat. It’ll burn through the college population fast, a minimal number of them will die (fewer than die from things like car accidents) and we will have made that much more progress towards herd immunity. Then when these students go home for the holidays, their elderly relatives will be safer.
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Herd immunity? Gotcha you are okay with 3 million dying to get there. Is that what pro-life is about?
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3 million dying to reach herd immunity is a March-era guess. In order to make a confident guess we’d need to know how many people have a preexisting T-cell immunity, but the best studies so far (which are poor) say that it’s 40-60% of the population, and herd immunity is reached around 70%. This explains our observation that infections die down once 10-20% of a region is infected. 40-60% plus 10-20% is roughly 70%.
Estimates vary but it seems like 10x the number of people who have tested positive could have actually had the virus (this is controversial lately because of claims that the PCR tests have a large percentage of false positives, taking a tiny amount of virus, including dead virus, that someone is successfully fighting off without symptoms and replicating it until it is detectable.)
So in many regions, it’s not at all unreasonable to think that we’ve hit that 70% number of preexisting immunity + recently sick and have antibodies + innate immune system is strong enough to fight it off. Certainly in the hardest hit areas like NY and NJ. Probably AZ by now too. The real question in my mind is areas that were never hit hard, like WI.
No matter how you look at it, there’s no way that the death rate will increase by 10x before we reach herd immunity. I made this prediction on 9/7: the number of people in the US who will die from covid from here on out will be less than the number of people who have died so far.
Let’s take a worst case scenario: what if there is no large number of people with preexisting T-cell immunity and the immunity granted by having the disease only lasts 3 months. In this case, the artificial antibody manufacturing programs will be scaled up and people who are at risk of dying will have to take those medicines every few months for the rest of their lives. For the rest of us it would be like the seasonal flu.
The potential of 3 million deaths was sufficiently scary to justify the lockdowns back in March, with what little we knew then. Now we know that the lockdowns didn’t help, and that we haven’t even lost a tenth of that number.
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The usual response is “As long as it’s THEM and not MEEEEEEEE.”
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I’d love to get covid-19 and get it over with. There doesn’t appear to be a reliable way to do so. Maybe I should start looking around me for churches holding in-person services.
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